Thousands marched through the city of Bhopal, India, today to mark the 15th anniversary of a poisonous gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant, which killed an estimated 6,000 people and injured perhaps hundreds of thousands more. The marchers protested insufficient compensation for injuries and demanded action against Union Carbide officials and Warren Anderson, who was the company’s CEO in 1984. A Greenpeace report released this week says that the area’s groundwater and soil is still contaminated and that Bhopal residents may still be exposed to hazardous chemicals on a daily basis. The U.S. Public Interest Group released a report yesterday showing that nearly 5,000 facilities in the U.S. store more extremely hazardous chemicals than were released during the Bhopal disaster.
